John Lennon moved to the United States in 1971, soon after the Beatles rock group disbanded. Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono arrived in New York City to seek custody of Mrs. Lennon’s daughter by a former marriage to an American citizen. When Lennon tried to adjust his status to legal permanent resident, his application was denied by the INS and Lennon was ordered deported. The final appeal went to U.S. District Court before Judge Irving R. Kaufman.
Deportation orders are one of the few INS decisions which can be appealed outside the INS and the Department of Justice. Otherwise, the INS has "plenary" powers, that is to say, the INS has full, complete, and absolute power to decide matters. If not for the level-headed decision rendered by Judge Kaufman, John Lennon would have become a victim of what Judge Kaufman called the "labyrinthine provisions of the Immigration and Naturalization Act."
What makes the John Lennon case so interesting is that the INS -- in the vain, dogged, narrow-minded pursuit of a legality – lost all sense of proportion and balance and actually tried kick out of this country one of the world’s greatest songwriters, who brought pleasure to millions of people around the world, not least of which his adoring American fans. This was one of the most inane chapters in American immigration history.
The INS wanted to deport Lennon because in 1968 the British-born musician had been convicted of possessing marijuana resin (hashish). He thus became what the INS calls an excludable alien owing to this prior criminal offense.
On Oct. 8, 1968, detectives from Scotland Yards drug squad conducted a warrantless search of Lennon’s London apartment. The policemen found one half ounce of hashish inside a binocular case. Lennon pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis resin and was fined.
Once in the United States, Lennon was denied adjustment of status because of a provision in the Immigration and Naturalization Act which excludes from the U.S. people who have committed certain crimes, the illicit possession of marijuana being one of them. (This section of the INA has since been revised and made even more stringent than it was in 1975.)
At his deportation hearing, letters from many eminent writers, artists, and entertainers, as well as from New York City Mayor John Lindsay, were submitted to show that Lennon would make an unique and valuable contribution to this country’s cultural heritage. The Immigration Court and the Board of Immigration Appeal (both of which operate under the Department of Justice, an executive agency under the President of the U.S.) nonetheless ruled that Lennon be deported. Lennon claimed that the INS had singled him out because the agency feared he would lead potentially embarrassing demonstrations for the peace movement against the then-existing administration.
On further appeal, before U.S. District Court, Judge Kaufman in essence used a legal technicality to counter the legal technicality used by the INS. The Judge held that under English drug possession laws "guilty knowledge" is not an element of the offense. In other words, in England, a person may be convicted of drug possession whether or not he was aware that an illegal drug was in his house. In American law, "guilty knowledge" is an element of a drug possession offense. Judge Kaufman ruled that since it was never proven that Lennon knew about the hashish in his London apartment, his conviction did not rise to the level of "illicit possession" as is required under American law. The judge therefore vacated the deportation order.
"Given, in sum, the minimal gain in effective enforcement, we cannot imagine that Congress would impose the harsh consequences of an excludable alien classification,’" the judge wrote, "upon a person convicted under a foreign law that made guilty knowledge irrelevant. We hold it did not."
In his ruling, Judge Kaufman also made several insightful comments about U.S. immigration in general:
"We have come along way from the days when fear and prejudice toward alien races were the guiding forces behind our immigration laws. The Chinese exclusion acts of the 1880s and the ‘barred zones’ created by the 1917 Immigration Act have, thankfully, been removed from the statute books and relegated to the historical treatises. Nevertheless, the power of Congress to exclude or deport natives of other countries remains virtually unfettered. In the vast majority of deportation cases, the fate of the alien must therefore hinge upon narrow issues of statutory construction. …
"Deportation is not, of course, a penal sanction. But in severity it surpasses all but the most Draconian criminal penalties. We therefore cannot deem wholly irrelevant the long unbroken tradition of the criminal law that harsh sanctions should not be imposed where moral culpability is lacking. …
"The courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds. …
"Before closing with the traditional words of disposition, we feel it appropriate to express our faith that the result we have reached in this case not only is consistent with the language and purpose of the narrow statutory provision we construe, but also furthers the intent of the immigration laws in a far broader sense. The excludable aliens statute is but an exception, albeit necessary, to the traditional tolerance of a nation founded and built by immigrants. If, in our two hundred years of independence, we have in some measure realized our ideals, it is in large part because we have always found a place for those committed to the spirit of liberty and willing to help implement it. Lennon’s four-year battle to remain in our country is testimony to his faith in this American dream."
(Kollerkrot: please just answer the thread without copying the whole quote again...Thanks)
The only thing un-American about America, is the USCIS.
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